Toshiba Throws 4K Crowd a Bone, Launches World's Fastest microSD Memory Cards

[Mani]

The first memory cards to comply with the UHS-II standard
Toshiba is crowning its new microSD memory cards as being the fastest the world has ever seen. They're supposedly the first in the industry to comply with the UHS-II interface standard, which is an ultra high speed serial bus interface defined in the SD Memory Card Standard Version 4.20. Specifically, the new cards are UHS Speed Class 3 enabled, which allow for 4K video capture at constant minimum write speeds of 30MB/s.

There are two capacities available -- 32GB and 64GB. The 64GB cards top out at 260MB/s read and 240MB/s write speeds, while the 32GB cards offer a maximum read speed of 145MB/s and a maximum write speed of 130MB/s. That represents an 8x write speed improvement and 2.7x read speed improvement when compared to Toshiba's current 32GB microSD UHS-1 cards.

"This means that 4K2K video, live broadcast and content can be recorded on high-performance cameras," Toshiba said.

Toshiba has begun sampling shipments to chipset vendors and manufacturers of smartphones and other mobile devices. It's not clear when the cards will be available to the general public or for how much.